Free zones have long been recognized as a means of increasing foreign direct investment (FDI), generating employment, boosting exports in strategic sectors, and transferring skills to local workforces. In Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, free zones resemble demarcated geographic areas contained within a territory’s national boundaries where 100 percent foreign ownership is permitted and other rules of business are different than those that prevail in the national territory. GCC free zone entities are entirely government-owned and highly susceptible to exploitation by elites. In Oman, more than in any other GCC state, free zones possess overt political objectives in addition to more traditional economic goals. This paper argues that Oman’s government employed free zones from the late 1990s until present day to mitigate against civil strife, prevent future political protest, and satisfy elite interests. These objectives challenge traditional notions of free zone development, yet they neatly align with the concept that all economic institutions are political because they must have a political end in order to survive (Douglass North et al., 2009). While free zone sectors in neighboring GCC states aim to drive or complement broader economic development programs, Oman’s free zones are intrinsically linked to local and international politics. In particular, political tensions in Dhofar, Sohar, and Duqm help explain the existence of free zones in each respective territory. Oman’s free zones also establish a neutral sphere in the realm of international relations, which eases the facilitation of formal business relations with Iran. This paper adds a new scholarly dimension to two fields: i) political economy and ii) the Rentier State Theory. Despite the ubiquitous nature of free zones across the GCC, there is scant work on the political purposes of free zones and their embeddedness in broader institutions. Similarly, this analysis contributes to the developed body of work on rentier states by revealing how the Omani government accomplishes the dual aims of generating new rent streams and placating specific groups of citizens through free zone development. The paper draws heavily on primary research from data collection during onsite visits to free zones in Oman as well as oral interviews with free zone officials and editors from Omani media outlets. These interviews took place in Sohar, Muscat, Duqm, and Salalah as part of a larger, ongoing DPhil dissertation on the political economy of free zones in the GCC.

The oil price boom 2001-2014 washed billions of “petrodollars” into the coffers of Gulf Arab monarchies. The “recycling” of these funds had a different quality compared to the 1970s oil boom because a significant portion was invested in other Arab states, rather than just industrialised countries. Gulf corporations were investing in sectors such as finance, real estate, construction, or telecommunications. This is part of what Hanieh called “Gulf capital”. Political economists of the Middle East must therefore look beyond the “rentier states” to the circulation of Gulf capital across the Arab world. In order to understand the politics of Gulf investment in nonoil Arab states I compare Gulf-financed urban megaprojects in non-oil Arab states. I compare the public spaces produced by the Bouregreg project in Rabat and the Abdali project in Amman: While Abdali was purged of the initially planned national library and university, Bouregreg added a Zaha Hadid-designed “Grand Theatre”. If both these urban spaces are produced by neoliberal capitalism, then what accounts for the appearance or disappearance of cultural landmarks? Why does Gulf capital make a theatre appear in one place, while a university disappears in another? Drawing on Evans, I explain this variation with the politics of the “triple alliance” between state, local capital, and foreign (Gulf) capital. Political scientists usually classify both Jordan and Morocco as oil-poor absolute monarchies. Despite similar political economies, key differences explain the public spaces produced by Abdali and Bouregreg: The Moroccan monarchy is politically more centralised around the “makhzen”, it has a more diversified economy and foreign investor base, and the Moroccan businessman-monarch plays a more direct role in the economy than his Jordanian counterpart. Mohammad VI is thus in a stronger position vis-à-vis Gulf investors than Abdallah II. This affects patterns of rent-creation and rent-sharing but also the type of public space that is being produced in the megaproject. The paper is based on field research in both Amman and Rabat. This is part of a wider project which also includes Solidere (Beirut) and Rawabi (Ramallah/Birzeit). Apart from Evans and Hanieh, I draw on Marxist critiques of neoliberal urbanism and on Poulantzas’ concept of the “internalisation” of foreign capital. The integration of Arab states into circuits of Gulf capital results in dependency on the Gulf not only for the production of these spaces but even for consumption. Dependent neoliberalism creates commodified urban spaces.

In this paper, I approach urban greening, redevelopment and conservation debates in Istanbul from an urban political ecology perspective in order to unpack the multifaceted struggles new urban social movements face in Istanbul. The small-scale, family-run agricultural tradition called bostan (market-gardens) came to the spotlight in 2013 when the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality poured debris over the plots of vegetable gardens inside the land walls of Istanbul to begin the construction of a new park in the neighborhood. Diverse social actors such as urban rights activists, academics, architecture and engineering trade associations, ecology and food movements began mobilizing against the park project to conserve the remaining bostans as functioning agricultural land and as such, a cultural heritage. The legal battle halted the park project. Currently, the destroyed plots remain arid but the remaining gardens outside of the walls continue being cultivated. In 2015, right to the city activists and Istanbul Archeological Association, registered the historic bostan of the Piyalepasa Mosque in the district of Beyoglu as a protected cultural wealth with the Council for the Protection of Cultural Wealth. This legal protection forced the developers of another park project with an underground parking lot to remove this plot from the design. Simultaneously, new community garden projects with diverse intentions developed across the city as civil society oriented interventions in the urban landscape as alternative to state sponsored revitalization. In this paper, based on one year of uninterrupted ethnographic field work, I discuss the struggle to conserve Istanbul’s historic bostans (market gardens) and contemporary community gardening collectives as rich sources of knowledge on the socio-ecological value of food production in the urban context and potentials for building networks of alternative, local economies and nurturing dynamic social relationships. I argue that prof?t based model for urban greening and conservation, which has permeated urban revitalization and redevelopment discourses, has undermined and sometimes completely eliminated the abilities and efforts of civil society and ecologists to create accessible and sustainable urban futures. Nevertheless, local collectives, cooperatives and activists continue to forge territories of solidarity, construct their conceptions of good governance, and confront the profit based management of urban spaces, even in the volatile socio-political conditions of the state of exception instituted following the failed coup d’état attempt in July 2016.